He was arrested on bullshit reasoning in Pakistan, tortured, locked in Gitmo for 3 years (despite supposedly being a terrorist and having inside knowledge of 9/11), and then released without charge. Government officials have admitted he had nothing to do with terrorism, yet nobody has been held accountable for that.
If these people are heinous criminals then give them their trial and be done with it already. Criminals still have rights, and that includes the right to have their side heard.
What infuriates me even more than the blinking ads are websites that have the tracking scripts embedded in such a way that they break page functionality if they are blocked.
I block most of the major ad networks at the DNS level, but I've increasingly found that doing so breaks a number of major sites that use these networks for analytics purposes. Blocking the marketing network "2o7.net" (run by these guys) stops links on Apple's website from working (unblocking the provider and flushing my cache resolves the issue). Other networks break my bank's website (I think I need to change banks) and some airlines in a similar fashion. There's plenty more out there.
I'm sorry if I'm making things rough on ad-supported sites, but I'm not willing to have Apple and my bank track my way around the internet so that a few blogs can serve up ads uninterrupted.
It sounds trite, but there is a kernel of wisdom there. Buy a Macbook Pro if you can afford it.
If you have the budget, you'll get what you pay for. It has the only extended warranty for any electronic gadget that Consumer Reports recommends. It will run any OS you like. It will last for 5 to 10 years depending on your needs (games vs web/email, respectively). You can spend a similar amount and get a comparable or slightly better hardware package from Dell/Alienware, but it won't come with the warranty, OS options, elegance or robustness that Macbook Pros are famous for.
Agreed. I have a late-2007 MBP that is still my primary computer today. It looks feels brand new. My model suffered from a known issue with the Nvidia graphics chip (thanks to shoddy manufacturing on Nvidia's part, it was the subject of a widely-publicised class action lawsuit that also involved Dell and HP), and when it died on me late last year it was repaired for free (although I probably have Nvidia to thank for that more than Apple). It originally came with OSX 10.4 with a 10.5 upgrade disk but now runs 10.7 no hassles, although I did upgrade the RAM to 4GB myself. My MBP is pre-unibody so I imagine the newer models are even more durable.
Before the MBP I had a mid-2006 Macbook (the very first Macbook model). When I decided to upgrade to the MBP I gave the Macbook to my not very computer literate mother (who isn't always the most gentle with electronic devices) who continues to use it this day. The only issue she experiences is that the power button is finally starting to wear to the point where it sometimes takes two presses to start the computer.
In contrast I have my work provided HP Elitebook from 2009 (a fairly high-end business model) that creaks, groans, has plastic panels that don't seamlessly match up, a lower quality LCD, weighs more than the MBP, has fan exhausts in truly bizarre places and trackpad buttons that fire randomly sometimes. In it's favour it has slightly superior specs to the MBP, more ports and slots for various things, and it's relatively easier to disassemble (removable keyboards are great). However despite being 2 years younger in age I fully expect the MBP to be chugging along long after this thing is dead.
I appreciate that this is only an anecdote, and plenty of good reasons exist to hate on Apple, but in my experience the build quality of their gear is not one of them. An MBP is definitely worth a look IMHO.
Allow free importation of goods from the US and other markets and watch the vendor premiums for your mysterious island continent collapse. If Australians could simply buy from Adobe US, It'd be pretty difficult for Adobe to maintain a price premium...
I hope this is intended to be sarcastic. Firstly, Australia already has a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Secondly, the reason I can't buy from Adobe US, or Steam US, or iTunes US, or Whatever US has nothing to do with the government, but that each of those respective entities won't let me purchase from them and will refuse to accept my Australian credit card and billing address. Why? So they can slug me a 200% markup on the Australian store, despite $1AUD frequently exceeding $1 USD. The massive marking up of digital products downloaded over the internet is not the fault of the government.
Y'know why vendors price their goods absurdly high in Australia? Because they can.
THERE are growing calls for Australia's competition watchdog to conduct an inquiry into local apparel distributors who are preventing overseas suppliers from selling their products to Australian consumers on international websites or instructing them to increase their web prices.
The calls come after The Age last week revealed that a growing number of Australian fashion importers and wholesalers are reaching agreements with international brands to lift prices or cease shipping here.
In Australia, retailers will frequently impose 300-400% markups on items found easily online.
That is why an inquiry is needed.
That's the same as airbags, seat belts, ABS and every other safety innovation for automobiles.
Not really. You missed the parent's point. This system only becomes useful once a critical mass of cars have it installed, and thus creates a problem similar to the free-rider problem from economics. As a car buyer, what motivation would I have to pay extra for a car with this new system installed when hardly any cars have it? The system is useless to me until many others buy it, while those others benefit from my extra early adoption expense. Why not wait for everyone ELSE to buy cars with this system, while in the meantime I buy a cheaper car that is not so equipped? Everyone can delay their adoption waiting for "someone else" to create the swarm of vehicles.
Airbags, seatbelts and ABS don't suffer from this problem because they provide a benefit regardless of how many other cars have them. I incur all of the cost of the airbag but I also incur the vast majority of the benefit.
If anyone did militarize space, it would be nasty. It would either curtail all space exploration, or cause some pretty nasty wars.
It's highly unlikely militarisation of space would curtail exploration any more than militarisation of the sea curtailed exploration here on earth. As for the wars, perhaps.
On the flip side, the military has been the driving force behind many of the great technologies humanity has developed. Aeronautics, explosives, rocketry, computing, long-distance communications, the internet, optics, nuclear power, emergency medicine, navigation, and composites, too name a few, were all either invented or rapidly matured in response to military needs. Most of these technologies then furthered peaceful means. If there's no short-term profit in developing a technology, the military is the next best bet, provided it can somehow be adapted to make killing people easier.
Pretty sure. To heal someone in BC2 you change weapon to your medkit and press the fire button to chuck it on the ground. Players are healed when they stand near the medkit. It isn't like RPG-type games where you have to use special spells and powers in certain sequences or anything, only a few button presses are necessary on either platform.
Spotting is about the same; look at the enemy and press the spot button to make them show up on your teammates map. The "Q" key might be slightly easier to reach than the "select" button on xbox, but not so much that it would prevent anyone from doing it I would think.
I believe at 800m it's intended to be more of an "area fire" weapon than a point-target system. Closer than that though, I'd imagine they'd do the same as they do with other large-calibre grenades: use higher elevation and lob it to some extent. They wouldn't be using the same sighting that your graph is based on. Multiple sources put the 40mm round used by the Mk-19 at a muzzle velocity of 250m/s, with a range of about 1.5kms, but the round travels on a much more curved trajectory.
It'd probably still be possible to get a round through a window at 500m though. Skilled M-79 gunners (76 m/s muzzle vel with 350m effective range) were supposedly able to put rounds through windows quite consistently. A laser range finder would also help.
The projectile is traveling say 1000 feet per second
According to this source, the 25mm round fired by the XM25 has a muzzle velocity of 210m/s, which is under 700fps. By the time it reaches 500m it won't be going that fast. I'd say it's a solvable problem.
The AGS-17 is not equivalent to the XM25. The AGS-17 is a crew-served weapon mounted on a tripod or pintle mount. Unlike the XM25 it can't be fired from the shoulder or hip by one man, and it doesn't fire "smart" rounds, just regular impact-fused grenades. The American equivalent is the Mk-19, which has a slightly larger calibre but is otherwise a very similar weapon.
My AT&T store said that the demand for them was high, especially for the Focus, and I've seen similar responses from the T-Mo reps.
I'd expect nothing less from a salesperson. "This item is wildly unpopular, we have crates of them sitting out the back and we'll never get rid of them all, but please pay the full advertised price" isn't exactly a good marketing pitch. We really need to see figures from a third-party without a vested interest in moving units to determine WP7's success/failure.
It is not split between peak and offpeak. See the part where it says "Monthly 'Anytime' Quota"? That's what the "Anytime" part means. Go read the T&C's if you don't believe me, there is no mention of peak/offpeak. If you insist otherwise please describe exactly where it "clearly" states this fact.
I assume by "combined effort" (I can't see that phrase anywhere on their website) you're referring to uploads+downloads being counted. The previous poster is correct; most users do not upload as much as they download, with the exception of torrenters. The small amount of ACKs sent in reply to packets received in the course of regular web activity does not result in a 1:1 upload:download ratio. You can definitely download a lot more than 500GB.
I'm kind of surprised the article didn't make any mention of iOS 4's improved data protection methods: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4175
In short, the previously flawed encryption method of the 3GS is improved by encrypting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode. Additionally, passcodes can now be alphanumeric and longer than 4 characters.
If you're using a 3GS and have upgraded to 4.0, you'll need to wipe and restore the phone to take advantage of this (data protection, not the passcode), the link above has details.
I doubt that environmental conditions have much to do with it -- maybe they accelerate delamination/flaking of the data layer, but it wouldn't be a problem had the data layer been protected by substantial plastic on both sides.
I think the issue is less one of delamination and more one of degradation of the organic dyes that compose the "data layer" in CD-Rs.
Given the fuss about laptop batteries igniting a while back, I can't see the TSA being too pleased with a device with an inbuilt (presumably incendiary) self-destruct mechanism, even without the knife.
The F-35 is not replacing the F-22, it is complementing it, in the same way that the cheaper and more flexible F-16 complemented the specialised F-15. F-22 procurement hasn't even completed yet, and most of the aircraft that have been delivered are only a few years old at most.
So I do concede that you may in fact be correct on 80-90% figure, although I still argue that Ubisoft isn't helping matters any. I just have a thing about verifiable sources;) .
I think the rampant PC game piracy (almost 80-90%) can be blamed for this somewhat.
Source? The recently released Call of Duty MW2 sold 15 million units. If that figure represents only 10% of the copies in existence, with the other 90% being pirated and not counted as sales, that means there are 150 million people playing the game. I'm convinced that the video game market is expanding, and will have increased social acceptance in the future, but I'm finding 150 million people a bit hard to believe. Furthermore, the same has sold more copies than it's predecessor, which only sold approx 14 million copies. More people are buying games.
Infinity Ward certainly doesn't seem to be suffering from rampant piracy. Perhaps people aren't buying Ubisoft's games not so they can pirate them, but because their products suck and treat customers like slaves.
I'm not sure about the machines at Walmart, but this one apparently comes with free phone and email support. Depending on how long that support is for, and what it covers, that may explain some of the difference in price. The rest may be due to the fact that these machines will not sell in anywhere near the volume that Walmart can move.
So, the comment which you referred to as "bull" was actually correct, if you want to own a piece of F-14, you're going to have to have friends in Iran (or be one of a handful of privileged museums).
Re:Vacuous Star Trek? Not Stewart.
on
Sir Patrick Stewart
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· Score: 2, Informative
the episode where he lived an entire life in another planet and learned to play the flute (can't remember the name.)
My personal favourite was "Darmok", the one where he's abducted and trapped on a planet with an alien he can't communicate with. I won't spoil it for you in case you haven't seen it, but it's a truly moving performance by Stewart IMHO.
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Gitmo is full of really dangerous and nasty people who were most likely plotting to murder innocents for the cause of religious zealotry.
How dangerous does this man sound to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamdouh_Habib
He was arrested on bullshit reasoning in Pakistan, tortured, locked in Gitmo for 3 years (despite supposedly being a terrorist and having inside knowledge of 9/11), and then released without charge. Government officials have admitted he had nothing to do with terrorism, yet nobody has been held accountable for that.
If these people are heinous criminals then give them their trial and be done with it already. Criminals still have rights, and that includes the right to have their side heard.
The automobile has brought more harm to innocent people than Tor ever will. Every technology has unintended consequences.
What infuriates me even more than the blinking ads are websites that have the tracking scripts embedded in such a way that they break page functionality if they are blocked.
I block most of the major ad networks at the DNS level, but I've increasingly found that doing so breaks a number of major sites that use these networks for analytics purposes. Blocking the marketing network "2o7.net" (run by these guys) stops links on Apple's website from working (unblocking the provider and flushing my cache resolves the issue). Other networks break my bank's website (I think I need to change banks) and some airlines in a similar fashion. There's plenty more out there.
I'm sorry if I'm making things rough on ad-supported sites, but I'm not willing to have Apple and my bank track my way around the internet so that a few blogs can serve up ads uninterrupted.
It sounds trite, but there is a kernel of wisdom there. Buy a Macbook Pro if you can afford it.
If you have the budget, you'll get what you pay for. It has the only extended warranty for any electronic gadget that Consumer Reports recommends. It will run any OS you like. It will last for 5 to 10 years depending on your needs (games vs web/email, respectively). You can spend a similar amount and get a comparable or slightly better hardware package from Dell/Alienware, but it won't come with the warranty, OS options, elegance or robustness that Macbook Pros are famous for.
Agreed. I have a late-2007 MBP that is still my primary computer today. It looks feels brand new. My model suffered from a known issue with the Nvidia graphics chip (thanks to shoddy manufacturing on Nvidia's part, it was the subject of a widely-publicised class action lawsuit that also involved Dell and HP), and when it died on me late last year it was repaired for free (although I probably have Nvidia to thank for that more than Apple). It originally came with OSX 10.4 with a 10.5 upgrade disk but now runs 10.7 no hassles, although I did upgrade the RAM to 4GB myself. My MBP is pre-unibody so I imagine the newer models are even more durable.
Before the MBP I had a mid-2006 Macbook (the very first Macbook model). When I decided to upgrade to the MBP I gave the Macbook to my not very computer literate mother (who isn't always the most gentle with electronic devices) who continues to use it this day. The only issue she experiences is that the power button is finally starting to wear to the point where it sometimes takes two presses to start the computer.
In contrast I have my work provided HP Elitebook from 2009 (a fairly high-end business model) that creaks, groans, has plastic panels that don't seamlessly match up, a lower quality LCD, weighs more than the MBP, has fan exhausts in truly bizarre places and trackpad buttons that fire randomly sometimes. In it's favour it has slightly superior specs to the MBP, more ports and slots for various things, and it's relatively easier to disassemble (removable keyboards are great). However despite being 2 years younger in age I fully expect the MBP to be chugging along long after this thing is dead.
I appreciate that this is only an anecdote, and plenty of good reasons exist to hate on Apple, but in my experience the build quality of their gear is not one of them. An MBP is definitely worth a look IMHO.
Allow free importation of goods from the US and other markets and watch the vendor premiums for your mysterious island continent collapse. If Australians could simply buy from Adobe US, It'd be pretty difficult for Adobe to maintain a price premium...
I hope this is intended to be sarcastic. Firstly, Australia already has a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Secondly, the reason I can't buy from Adobe US, or Steam US, or iTunes US, or Whatever US has nothing to do with the government, but that each of those respective entities won't let me purchase from them and will refuse to accept my Australian credit card and billing address. Why? So they can slug me a 200% markup on the Australian store, despite $1AUD frequently exceeding $1 USD. The massive marking up of digital products downloaded over the internet is not the fault of the government.
Y'know why vendors price their goods absurdly high in Australia? Because they can.
And because international retailers selling products to Australians online are colluding with domestic retailers to raise prices or eliminate online sales entirely. From that article:
THERE are growing calls for Australia's competition watchdog to conduct an inquiry into local apparel distributors who are preventing overseas suppliers from selling their products to Australian consumers on international websites or instructing them to increase their web prices. The calls come after The Age last week revealed that a growing number of Australian fashion importers and wholesalers are reaching agreements with international brands to lift prices or cease shipping here.
In Australia, retailers will frequently impose 300-400% markups on items found easily online. That is why an inquiry is needed.
That's the same as airbags, seat belts, ABS and every other safety innovation for automobiles.
Not really. You missed the parent's point. This system only becomes useful once a critical mass of cars have it installed, and thus creates a problem similar to the free-rider problem from economics. As a car buyer, what motivation would I have to pay extra for a car with this new system installed when hardly any cars have it? The system is useless to me until many others buy it, while those others benefit from my extra early adoption expense. Why not wait for everyone ELSE to buy cars with this system, while in the meantime I buy a cheaper car that is not so equipped? Everyone can delay their adoption waiting for "someone else" to create the swarm of vehicles.
Airbags, seatbelts and ABS don't suffer from this problem because they provide a benefit regardless of how many other cars have them. I incur all of the cost of the airbag but I also incur the vast majority of the benefit.
If anyone did militarize space, it would be nasty. It would either curtail all space exploration, or cause some pretty nasty wars.
It's highly unlikely militarisation of space would curtail exploration any more than militarisation of the sea curtailed exploration here on earth. As for the wars, perhaps.
On the flip side, the military has been the driving force behind many of the great technologies humanity has developed. Aeronautics, explosives, rocketry, computing, long-distance communications, the internet, optics, nuclear power, emergency medicine, navigation, and composites, too name a few, were all either invented or rapidly matured in response to military needs. Most of these technologies then furthered peaceful means. If there's no short-term profit in developing a technology, the military is the next best bet, provided it can somehow be adapted to make killing people easier.
Pretty sure. To heal someone in BC2 you change weapon to your medkit and press the fire button to chuck it on the ground. Players are healed when they stand near the medkit. It isn't like RPG-type games where you have to use special spells and powers in certain sequences or anything, only a few button presses are necessary on either platform.
Spotting is about the same; look at the enemy and press the spot button to make them show up on your teammates map. The "Q" key might be slightly easier to reach than the "select" button on xbox, but not so much that it would prevent anyone from doing it I would think.
I believe at 800m it's intended to be more of an "area fire" weapon than a point-target system. Closer than that though, I'd imagine they'd do the same as they do with other large-calibre grenades: use higher elevation and lob it to some extent. They wouldn't be using the same sighting that your graph is based on. Multiple sources put the 40mm round used by the Mk-19 at a muzzle velocity of 250m/s, with a range of about 1.5kms, but the round travels on a much more curved trajectory.
It'd probably still be possible to get a round through a window at 500m though. Skilled M-79 gunners (76 m/s muzzle vel with 350m effective range) were supposedly able to put rounds through windows quite consistently. A laser range finder would also help.
The projectile is traveling say 1000 feet per second
According to this source, the 25mm round fired by the XM25 has a muzzle velocity of 210m/s, which is under 700fps. By the time it reaches 500m it won't be going that fast. I'd say it's a solvable problem.
The AGS-17 is not equivalent to the XM25. The AGS-17 is a crew-served weapon mounted on a tripod or pintle mount. Unlike the XM25 it can't be fired from the shoulder or hip by one man, and it doesn't fire "smart" rounds, just regular impact-fused grenades. The American equivalent is the Mk-19, which has a slightly larger calibre but is otherwise a very similar weapon.
My AT&T store said that the demand for them was high, especially for the Focus, and I've seen similar responses from the T-Mo reps.
I'd expect nothing less from a salesperson. "This item is wildly unpopular, we have crates of them sitting out the back and we'll never get rid of them all, but please pay the full advertised price" isn't exactly a good marketing pitch. We really need to see figures from a third-party without a vested interest in moving units to determine WP7's success/failure.
It is not split between peak and offpeak. See the part where it says "Monthly 'Anytime' Quota"? That's what the "Anytime" part means. Go read the T&C's if you don't believe me, there is no mention of peak/offpeak. If you insist otherwise please describe exactly where it "clearly" states this fact.
I assume by "combined effort" (I can't see that phrase anywhere on their website) you're referring to uploads+downloads being counted. The previous poster is correct; most users do not upload as much as they download, with the exception of torrenters. The small amount of ACKs sent in reply to packets received in the course of regular web activity does not result in a 1:1 upload:download ratio. You can definitely download a lot more than 500GB.
I'm kind of surprised the article didn't make any mention of iOS 4's improved data protection methods:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4175
In short, the previously flawed encryption method of the 3GS is improved by encrypting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode. Additionally, passcodes can now be alphanumeric and longer than 4 characters.
If you're using a 3GS and have upgraded to 4.0, you'll need to wipe and restore the phone to take advantage of this (data protection, not the passcode), the link above has details.
I doubt that environmental conditions have much to do with it -- maybe they accelerate delamination/flaking of the data layer, but it wouldn't be a problem had the data layer been protected by substantial plastic on both sides.
I think the issue is less one of delamination and more one of degradation of the organic dyes that compose the "data layer" in CD-Rs.
when somebody plugs their computer into the network, which was detected by pointing a webcam at the network switch to watch when lights came on/off
You seem to be going to a lot of trouble to avoid using SNMP ;) .
Given the fuss about laptop batteries igniting a while back, I can't see the TSA being too pleased with a device with an inbuilt (presumably incendiary) self-destruct mechanism, even without the knife.
Nice try, MPAA.
The F-35 is not replacing the F-22, it is complementing it, in the same way that the cheaper and more flexible F-16 complemented the specialised F-15. F-22 procurement hasn't even completed yet, and most of the aircraft that have been delivered are only a few years old at most.
The game sold 15 millions units overall, not just on PC. It probably sold more on 360+PS3 than on PC.
You do appear to be correct on the breakup of sales figures. If you believe Torrentfreak's numbers, you might be right on the piracy stats as well. The piracy figures for the x360 version are also quite interesting, but of course you run the risk of getting banned by MS.
So I do concede that you may in fact be correct on 80-90% figure, although I still argue that Ubisoft isn't helping matters any. I just have a thing about verifiable sources ;) .
I think the rampant PC game piracy (almost 80-90%) can be blamed for this somewhat.
Source? The recently released Call of Duty MW2 sold 15 million units. If that figure represents only 10% of the copies in existence, with the other 90% being pirated and not counted as sales, that means there are 150 million people playing the game. I'm convinced that the video game market is expanding, and will have increased social acceptance in the future, but I'm finding 150 million people a bit hard to believe. Furthermore, the same has sold more copies than it's predecessor, which only sold approx 14 million copies. More people are buying games.
Infinity Ward certainly doesn't seem to be suffering from rampant piracy. Perhaps people aren't buying Ubisoft's games not so they can pirate them, but because their products suck and treat customers like slaves.
I'm not sure about the machines at Walmart, but this one apparently comes with free phone and email support. Depending on how long that support is for, and what it covers, that may explain some of the difference in price. The rest may be due to the fact that these machines will not sell in anywhere near the volume that Walmart can move.
No, it doesn't. All the ex-USN F-14's are being destroyed to prevent parts from entering Iranian hands. IIRC, they have an enormous guillotine with which they cut through key structural components. Smaller items like electronics are probably removed separately. The inventory of spare parts will be destroyed too.
So, the comment which you referred to as "bull" was actually correct, if you want to own a piece of F-14, you're going to have to have friends in Iran (or be one of a handful of privileged museums).
the episode where he lived an entire life in another planet and learned to play the flute (can't remember the name.)
"The Inner Light" was the episode you're looking for. Wikipedia has a complete list in case you weren't already aware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_TNG_episodes
My personal favourite was "Darmok", the one where he's abducted and trapped on a planet with an alien he can't communicate with. I won't spoil it for you in case you haven't seen it, but it's a truly moving performance by Stewart IMHO.
If something goes wrong on the surface, help is 39 days away, instead of 6 months.